>> this week on the journal editorial report. the vice-president candidates square off in their one and only debate. what do we expect from the obama/mitt romney rematch . the look at romney poll's surge. will the liar, liar strategy work? and congratulational hearing on libya shed new light on what happened in the attack on benghazi and raise new questions about the administration's response. welcome to the journal

editorial report. i am paul gigot. all eyes were on the vice-presidential district attorney bait. the two spared over everything from iran and medicare reform and middle class taxes. >> the middle class got knocked on their heels and the great recession crushed them and they need help now. the last people who need help is 120,000 families for another 500 billion dollar tax cut over the next 10 years. >> there are not enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for the pending. next time you hear them say don't worry about. we'll get the wealthy people to pay their fair share watch out, the tax bill is coming to you. >> with us is dan, and collumist bill, and jason riley and washington columist

kim strassel. >> he was doing what he was asked to do which is to energize the base. after the debate performance by obama. democrats were worried. but less so after the vice-presidential debate. that was joe biden's concern. >> how did he do that? >> he did that mentioning things that the democrats want the president. the fren percent . autobailout and he served up a lot of red meat. >> what about paul ryan. how did he hold up under the onslaught. >> paul ryan's job was to go in well dollar. everyone knew what was coming. joe biden lambasting him and his job was to go out and meet

and refute and call them out on i and generally not put in big errors that dominant the discussion and check the romney campaign and he did do that. >> one of the features of the debate was the biden mannerisms and his behavior. biden's interrupt. look at how biden interjected himself when ryan was speaking. >> here is the problem. they got caught with their hans in the cookie jar turning medicare in a piggy bank for obama care and their octoberiary one out of the six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business as a result of this. they are projected to lose the current medicare advantage they can. more signed up for medicare advantage after the change. >> mr. vice-president, i know

you are under a lot of durress to make up for lost ground, but i think people will be better served if we don't keep interrupting each other. >> by one count. 83 times biden interrupted. how effective was that as a strategy. >> it was effective paul. there might have been 25 interruptions . somebody counted. 83 interruptions and joe biden spoke three-quarters of the time and that means he effectively destroyed every statement that paul rhine tried to make. biden came across as a bar room bore but in the r room you can say thanks old-timer we got to go home. he forced the men can to listen. >> ryan too devential. some conseshatives thought he should be more conservative. >> i think he was.

i think he let joe biden have the last word on too many things. but he did what he was there to do which was to show he was a vice-presidential candidate and he had a demeanor. no one will remember anything bad. joe biden dominated the debate and you could say he won but he also could have lost the debate once we see the saturday night portrayal. >> he might have won but lost if you look at smirk and snarl. >> my former colleague said one of the measures of the debate before the romney debate. who cuts the adand the rnc has the adof laughter. and very effective in the post debate. what are people going to remember? they will not remember the fine points. they will remember joe biden's mannerisms . michael goodwin said he was

laughing in the begin angry in the end and it was not clear if his medication is wearing off. >> if you like joe biden you liked it. and if you didn't you thought it was a bore. what about the people in the middle? >> it was not the interruptions only but the condescending manner that turned off the voterss and thea may haunt the ticket later on >> do you think paul ryan rose to the presidential level on foreign policy? >> he did. look that a bit of a mixed performance at times. he scored heavily talking about libya and benghazi in the beginning and talking about american projecting its image in the world and some thought it was his most effective lines of the entire debate. i think there was less of a good response on syria and iran to a certain degree and the question isid whether or

not biden's performance was over the top and did that matter. people were having a hard time paying attention to anything but joe biden. >> paul, it is supposed to be a debate and not a wwf smack down and most viewers tuned in because they wanted to hear the vice-president of the united states and his opponent talk about the issues that are before the american people right now primarily the econo they were not begin the opportunity to do that because of the way joe biden behaved in the debate. i think he will cost obama long-term among the undecided vores. >> any obligation on the moderator. they are supposed to make sure people can hear. >> i was disappointed. i don't think she was biased. i must preferred the first format. i found disconcerting part

what dan said and they were debating with one person rather than each other and the american people and look at the split screens. i found that we had a productive debate the last time. i would rather the issues to be debated less by one newspaper person or one tv reporter than by the candidates themselves. >> it is not a press conference it is a debate. much more on this week's vice-presidential debate when we come back . expectations are high for the rematch. will the president raise his game and can mitt romney sustain his momentum.

♪ >> we are back with more on this week's vice-presidential debate and a look at ahead to tuesday's obama/mitt romney rematch. we'll have a look at the

debate on the economy. >> by the way, they talk about the great recession like it fell out of the sky and oh, my goodness where did it come from? it came from this man voting for two wars on a credit card and prescription drug benefit on the credit card and trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy. i was there and voted against them and said no, we can't afford that and all of the sudden they are seized about the debt they credited. >> joe and i are from similar town. he's from scanton, pennsylvania and i am from janesville, wisconsin. you whan the unemployment rate is. 10 percent. you know what it was when you came in 8.5 percent. >> did biden turn the tables and put the focus more on romney's agenda. >> paul ryan didn't get much much a chance to put it on biden for anything.

and now look. he did go out there and he tried to the extent while he was dodging the kitchen sink to put information and continue to further the romney agenda for a positive vision for the economy but he didn't get a big chance. romney will have to be aware of and get ready as he move in the debate for obama. they have a sense of what is coming. obama will not make the mistake and in any way make style mistakes that biden did. >> the answer for ryan that was weak. he said romney is a car guy. that is not a answer on the bailout. that is not an explanation. >> i think on domestic policy ryan did okay. most of the debate was foreign policy. but on domestic policy he did okay with the exception of his discussion of entitlement

reform. biden got the best of him when he said who do you trust. he talked to the camera and that came off well for biden. he was defensive, ryan was in defending the budget proposal from the past and got distracted and on the whole rhine rain had a strong night. >> will this impact the presidential race, dan? or are we going to forget about it except for the saturday night clips. >> i think it will have an affect on the race. voters out there that are going to decide the election are paying close attention to what these people are saying in termings of why the economy is behaving poorly . if connected to what bark obama is doing in his stump speeches. he mocks and ridicules romney rather than (talking all at

once.) ing about his record. biden's weird performance is a technique they adopted. i think voters are looking for something deeper and the burden is on it. >> no hint of a second term agenda. >> i think he showed president obama that you can be aggressive and defend. >> romney will be on notice he is coming at you. >> and he showed us how to not be aggressive. i got the impression that romney was holding back a little bit and he was a little nice and he left a few zingers on the table because he was dominanting >> but obama is cooler than biden. biden is all heat and energy and attack. obama is laid back. can he go on the attack like biden. >> i think he can but he opens the door for romney to be more aggress and i have i think

governor romney will be more aggressive. >> and two thingings, you will see obama being more aggressive but without the smirking and condescension. >> it is more dangerous dangerous and more difficult is the format of the debate when ordinary people are asking the questions and you turn to the opponent. >> one of the problems with the obama campaign. they were careful not to have the president look because it would knock his likeability numbers that. is a burden he bears. a lot of independents are interested in voting for him because they like him. if he is mean and nasty that could hurt him among the subgroups like women. >> when we come back. the administration's response .

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>> given the information that you saw on tv and your knowledge of the situation in libya, did you come to a conclusion as to whether this was a terrorist actor weather it was based on some film that was on the internet in ltd. col. wood. >> it was instantly recognizable to me as a trust attack. >> instantly recognizable? >> yes, sir. >> why is that? >> mainly because of my prior knowledge there. i almost expected the attack to

come. >> powerful. and potentially damaging testimony this week from ltd. col. andrew wood who commanded a team there prior to the assault. the house government reform and oversight committee held a hearing into that attack, which killed four americans, including u.s. ambassador to libya, christine. we are back with brett stevens and he had core natural board member matt kominski. tt, you followed the hearings this week. what did we learn that we didn't know? >> i think three things principally. first of all, we learned there was no protest at the benghazi consulate. >> nonat all? >> no. and others knew this much earlier than the administration. second, they definitely thought it was a terrorist attack earlier than they made clear. the third thing we learned,

repeated requests to boost security he libyan mission were turn down and an elite force led by ltd. col. wood of 16 men was pulled out in august. >> pulled out? >> and extended into the fall. >> we have a clip at the debate because benghazi was a big topic at the vice presidential debate. let's listen. >> our ambassador in paris has a marine attachment guarding him. shouldn't we have a marines guarding our ambassador in benghazi, a place we any there was an al-qaeda cell with arms? >> well we weren't toll they wanted more security and we did not know they wanted more security. by the way, at the time we were told exactly, we said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew. that was the assessment. and as the intelligence community change the their view, we made it clear they changed their view. >> blame it on the intelligence community. how is that going to play? >> well, maybe it will play well

if the republicans allow them to get away with that. we've been saying consistently and we've been talking about libya for a long time on this show, this was a failure of policy. it wasn't a feel lure of intelligence. in fact, intelligence, as matt just pointed out, it was all there. we knew what was happening in benghazi. we knew very quickly what kind of incident we faced. we had been tracking al-qaeda in north africa. this was in attention by the administration and a later effort to spin it in a way that was political convenient by blaming the video instead of the rise of extremism there. >> and throwing the intelligence community over the side is politically a pretty risky strategy in the past for political leaders. >> i would, but i would say it's a piece with the obama-biden strategy. he said right there we didn't know. by we he means the vice president and the president. it's of a piece, paul, what they said about the recession and the

economy. obama said the economy wasn't my fault, george bush did it. and now joe biden is saying we didn't know, the intelligence community didn't tell us. they have this instinct not to take responsibility at all for any serious event. >> there were requests put in to the state for more security because they were very worried things were getting to the of control in libya this year. >> does that mean there's a fisher here between secretary of state clinton's state department and their narrative and the administration and the political campaign's narrative which wants to say it was the intelligence community or we didn't get the right story? >> well, patrick kennedy, the other state official who testified, said that he had gotten the same briefing and that he said the same thing they were saying. but the night before this hearing, state win out there and put out a very different story an the administration had pedaled in the first week. >> right. but the benghazi story is a piece of the administration's larger strategy, which is so long as we have an election on,

the rest of the world may as well not exist. iran doesn't exist, syria doesn't exist, the syria rebuffs from russia don't exist and a terrorist attack in benghazi sure as heck doesn't exist until it becomes a problem for us. >> where is secretary of state clinton in this? she's out of the picture. >> look for the next job or keeping a low profile. they put out susan rice, who is a leading candidate for that job if obama wins a second term. >> u.s. ambassador? >> she went on the talk shows after the attack to try to explain what happened, it was the fault of the video and spontaneous demonstrations. >> we will learn a lot more about what happened in benghazi. this issue isn't going away. what about the debate in general on foreign policy, dan? who got the better of that in your view, ryan or biden? >> perhaps joe biden did merely

because he would not allow paul ryan to explain himself fully. but the interesting thing is when they got on to something like afghanistan, if you listen closely, basically what joe biden was saying was that our intention was to get out. both of iraq and of afghanistan. and he was not going to let anything stand in the way of that argument. >> doesn't that resonate with the american mood right now which is lets not undertake any morph these adventures? >> i thought there was such a missed opportunity for polaron on afghanistan, on syria, in part because the romney campaign hasn't really articulated a truly distinctive position. it hasn't been willing to take a risk. paul ryan would have been in a much better position if he said i believe we should impose a no fly zone on syria just as we did in bosnia without the risk of a single calm. and the other thing he should have pressed is yes, we want to get out, but we also want to win. we don't want to squander the sacrifice of 2000 american soldiers who have been there for twelve years so that the taliban

can pick up where they were in 2001. >> that's a good point but the other one on syria, that's not where the romney campaign policy is so it was tough for ryan to be able to go there, as much as i agree with you. coming up in the second half hour, a closer look at mitt romney's post debate bounce. he's taking the lead in some national polls and is closing the gap in some important swing states. how big is the surge? and can romney keep it going? plus, there's no doubt the obama campaign is feeling the heat. but could their new attack but could their new attack hahahaha! hooohooo, hahaha! this is awesome! folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico sure are happy. i'd say happier than a slinky on an escalator.

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